Thursday, November 08, 2007

Having identified what data we're going to look at in Part II, we're going to start zooming in. This process may appear painfully slow, but I'm posting things as I put them together, and I'm not spending much as much time as you might think pre-analyzing things to fit conclusions you might imagine I've already drawn. To some degree I'm going to follow ideas suggested in the comments.

However, I do have a general intention of looking for the forest, not the trees, even though we appear to be looking closer and closer at individual branches.

Anyway, in this installment, I'm just going to put up narrower views of the graphs shown in Part II without a much of my own analysis. I've tried to crop them all to the relevent parts, and scaled to a 640 pixel wide image. In some cases, the tops of peaks are truncated. Also at the end are the Shackleton chromatograms from GDC-1101.

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Click on any image for larger size.

Figure 1: UCLA GDC 1362/ WMA slides Page 40

No reported values available. 4 labeled peaks, plus about 8 not called out if you squint; 12 total. By far the cleanest.

Figure 2: Ex 92 Landis F3

Ex 92 - April testing of 993865 - LNDD 1398 (Landis from 3-Jul). There is no reported value for the 5aA, with no explanation given. It could be a decision to say it has matrix interference. 5bA reported as -1.04.

16 peaks labeled by LNDD, plus at least 20 not called out; 36 total.

Exhibit for for 993856 from 11-Jul not available, reported as 5aA -2.91 and 5bA at -4.09

6
comments:

The UCLA slide is the etio and andro which elutes at about 1200+ seconds, etio followed by andro. This is the Landis F2. So you should compare the UCLA slide with the F2 graphs such as USADA 0343.

You will see that the andro and etio peaks while close together seem pretty well defined in the Landis F2 at USADA 0343. Yes there is a little more noise in areas away from the etio and andro, and one big peak following the andro. On the other hand blowup of the UCLA graph shows that the etio peak trails into the small following andro peak.

You should not be comparing the UCLA slide to the F3 graphs because it appears the 5B and 5A graphs are just more noisy, maybe because it's just harder to do the separation chemistry for those metabolites.

One proper comparison is the bottom graph in the Shackleton figure 3 above, which shows an intervening peak between the 5B and 5A and some possible shoulders. That's pretty messy by your criteria, yet Shackleton found it adequate for his carbon ratio calculations in his pioneering study. And I seem to recall Shackleton testified that the LNND chromatograms were fine.

when I look at details, I think the Shackleton chromatograms are still very much better, in a quantifiable way, that I'll be working through.

The observation on the UCLA slide is a point well taken, and I need to think about whether it affects my analysis. I think I am looking at a different kind of meta-analysis, and it may not matter, but I'm not sure.

The goodness of a metric depends on what you are using it for, and how reliably it tracks what you are concerned about. I can accept that what I'm doing is not what M is immediately concerned about, but that is not my goal.

Regardless , athletes are always on the look out for testosterone raising supplements. If it's not testosterone it'll something else that enhances the "natural" strength and agility of the athelete be it growth hormones , if not that then estrogen suppressors and the list goes on. It just comes with the territory of the map.

"Note bene: the isotopic value of 5aA was not determined for the reason of its weak concentration in the sample."

Not that it matters now. But I cannot see from exhibit 92 why it has any weaker concentration in the sample than in any other sample. It looks to me like they just couldn't decide if it was peak 14 or 15 in the July 3 IRMS 'gram, so they punted.

Total Poindexter Website Prize: to the fabulous geniuses over at trustbutverify, who not only are perhaps the most impassioned defenders of Floyd Landis' virtue beyond only the boy himself, but actually seem to understand the detailed scientific arguments they put out that the rest of us (well, me) are too stupid to even coherently summarize. Floyd, you better be innocent, or you owe these folks a *major* freakin' apology! (racejunkie)

"Who does awards for blogs? I sense a nomination is in order." (Carlton Reid, of BikeBiz)

"Hands-down champion of full-and I mean full-coverage of this hearing is the blog Trust But Verify. You'll have to have excellent background knowledge of the issues, and wade through page after page of detail to get to anything interesting, but it's raw and unfiltered and all there. The guy who runs the site, a cycling fan from Northern California, began casually providing a clearinghouse for Landis case news nearly 10 months ago, and now he has the haunted look of a man whose life has been hijacked and wants it back. (Loren Mooney, co-author of Positively False, at Bicycling)

"if you want the latest news on the Floyd Landis case, Trust but Verify is the go-to site. The author is biased in favor of Floyd (so am I) but the reporting is neutral and comprehensive." (12string musings)

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TBV is personally biased towards Floyd. I think it'll be a better world if he proves his innocence, and some inquisitors meet their own just ends. Interspersed between daily link roundups are pieces of commentary slanted towards understanding what will prove innocence in the discipline proceeding, and what will rehabilitate his reputation in the public eye. Make of them what you will. Agreement with me is not required, though I am right.